Assistant Professor Adriana Kovashka’s proposal titled, “Functional objects: How objects foreshadow film plots and explain advertisements” was recently selected to be funded by Amazon Research Awards. Her project focuses on how objects foreshadow film plots and explain advertisements. She proposes to understand two artistic media, movie plots and advertisements, via the objects emphasized in movie frames via object functionality.

“We propose to understand objects in film and ads through models that rely on common-sense knowledge extracted from: (1)movies and (2) knowledge bases. We use films as a medium to visually capture life experiences, including the context (i.e.objects) in which they occur,” said Kovashka.

This funding will be beneficial in strengthening the relationship and collaboration between The School of Computing and Information and Amazon Research.